The Class Size Debate Continues

Many people have put forward data on the fact that reducing class size will create better learning outcomes.
There is data that smaller classrooms can lead to more de facto “tracking:”
This may be true, but in the words of an internet entrepreneur: it won’t scale.
With lecture capture, video, and interactive content, content delivery can scale.  With [...]

Reduced Class Size: An Inefficiency in School Improvement

I got a chance to chat with with a successful former Yahoo! manager the other day at a VC in Palo Alto; the discussion focused almost exclusively on school improvement at the k12 level.  Of particular energy was our conversation on class size.  My perspective, confirming Dan Meyer, is that class size is more or [...]

School Reform Ideas and Michelle Rhee: Bankrupt on Big Ideas?

Well, I’ve been following this Michelle Rhee dictatorship for some time with much interest. With all the buzz lately – the article in the Atlantic and Time Magazine for instance – I figured I might lay down some commentary IMHO.
Michelle Rhee doesn’t have any ideas. At least she hasn’t revealed any [...]

Pain Point: College Level Remediation and the “Diploma To Nowhere”

A study recently published by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) revealed the near-embarrassing fact that twenty percent of students enrolled in 4-year institutions and thirty percent of students enrolled in 2-year institutions do not have the basic skills for post-secondary education or employment. Students surveyed could not understand basic computations, nor could they understand [...]

OMG, a Good Idea: Educational Value-Added Assessment System

Good Ideas in education are hard to come by. People in Education like Lofty Ideas – ideas that sound good but have vague execution plans and no difficult choices or dirty work, and thus no results.  Good Ideas have difficult, politically challenging implementation processes and actually produce results.  Good Ideas don’t just sound nice, but [...]

What About the Early Grades?

In the A Nation at Risk, 25 Years Later edition of education week, I was happy to hear someone emphasize the early grades.  Ed Hirsch Jr. might as well have been a secondary insider.  His critique was this: we’ve done high school reform acrobatics since A Nation At Risk with no overall effect, so the [...]